LOL you must have not watched wrestling for long.
The first wrestling I remember watching was the seemingly neverending battle between The Rock N' Roll Express and various members of The Four Horsemen. That would place it about 1985/6 or so. I've watched off and on since then. I guess damn near 20 years isn't that long in the grand scheme of things.
Can you define a jobber ?
Sure. It's a lower level talent brought in to job to the superstars. By job, I mean make the superstars look dominant. Saturday morning on WWF and NWA programing, and weekday afternoons after school on AWA, all of the matches, except for the main event were typically a mid carder or tag team beating up one or a duo of these jobbers.
And do you know what a glorified jobber is ?
Yep, it's a guy just above a jobber. It's a jobber who sometimes wins and sometimes even gets to the main vent of a show. The first name that comes to mind is S.D. Jones.
FYI, Iron Mike Sharpe was a glorified jobber. Punk and Bryan are not. And before you start with an elementary assessment of wrestling. Look up Iron Mike's Career in the WWE and territories to have an intelligent response.
I'm quite familiar with Mr. Sharpe. I'd put him at a similar level S.D. Jones. Where S.D. was there to make the main event heels look tough on Saturday mornings, Mike was there to make the main event faces look tough. I'm not going to look up his history, though, because that's just time consuming.
You don't have to like DB or Punk.
And I don't. It's been pretty evident in this thread, don't ya think?
But what they do is written and booked by Creative.
I'm quite aware that creative plots out promos and storylines. I kinda figured that out when I realized wrestling was fake in the late 80's.
OH YOU FORGET WRESTLING IS SCRIPTED.
No, I'm pretty sure I just admitted that I knew it was fake. There's no need to yell, though, dude. You'll get an aneurism if your not careful.
They have to take whatever shit is handed to them and make sugar. And sometimes its very hard to do.
Not everybody makes sugar. There are more gimmicks and storylines through history that have totally failed than been successful. Everybody just remembers the good shit.
SCSA had a very bad gimmick when he came to WWE. He knew it didn't work, Jim Ross knew it but Creative wouldn't budge until the 3:16 promo.
Steve was actually rather successful in the WCW and ECW and even held a few titles before he came to the WWE in the mid 90's. The seeds for the Stone Cold character were actually sewn in the ECW. I've long thought that Vince McMahon and the WWE took way, way too much credit for the phenomenon that was Stone Cold. Paul Heyman should get a lot of the credit.
And Stone Colds so called cheesy gimmick is who he is as a real person. That's exactly why he was over.
I know that. Most great gimmicks are a person's real personality with volume turned up to 11. Doesn't make it any less cheesy. Living up to any stereotype is pretty cheesy. A redneck on blast isn't any less cheesy than Ric Flair's millionaire on blast.
Watch a few Legends of Wrestling Roundtables and interviews from good ole Jim Ross.
No thanks. I prefer to watch the actual wrestling, not a bunch of dudes with fragile egos sitting around trying to make them selves look good whilst talking about it. It's kind of boring, to be honest with you.
Comparing Santino to anyone on the roster is asinine. He is the comedy guy and will always be over.
Why can't I compare Santino? How is it asinine? It's not he's a member of the roster just like everybody else. His being more popular than the champions would be like KoKo B. Ware or Hacksaw Jim Duggan being bigger than Hogan in the 80's. Is that a better comparison for you? I could think of others if you want.
And wrestling has alot more to compete with than it did 10, 20 or so years ago. And they could have the most compelling product and still wouldn't draw the old numbers. Why ? Because the audience is into MMA , Video Games and Reality TV.
More strawman bullshit. There is no more competition from any of what you mentioned nowadays then there was then.
MMA: Um, there is no reason a person can't be a fan of both products. I, in fact, am a fan of both products and am a mixed martial arts writer as one of my professions. The first UFC I watched happened in 1995. PRIDE came into favor a couple years later and I watched the shit out of that too. Didn't stop me from watching the Monday night wars, which also started in 1995.
Currently, MMA and WWE programming are very seldom airing against each other. There's no MMA regularly airing on Monday nights. Friday's there is MMA on HDNet, so maybe that takes viwers away from Smackdown, but it's not like HDNet is all over. It's a pay station with a rather limited viewership. MMA PPVs are on Saturday nights.
WWE programming is on Monday and Friday nights and the PPVs are on Sunday nights.
There are times when I've ordered a UFC PPV Saturday night and a WWE PPV on Sunday night. It's rare, but it has happened. Occasionally, I'll order a boxing PPV too.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who is a fan of both.
Video Games: I'm pretty sure I was obsessed, along with the rest of the world, with Final Fantasy VII in 1997 when it came out. I played the shit out of that game. Never missed a Monday night with Raw/Nitro though. Watched a bunch of ECW too.
Video games have been around on a grand scale from the mid 80's. The wrestling experienced it's main boom in popularity in the late 90's/early 2000's. Even though Playstation fever was in full swing then, millions upon millions of people still found time to watch their favorite wrestling program.
They still would, if the program was compelling. It's not, so they play video games.
Reality TV: The Real World on MTV first aired in 1992. Survivor first aired in 2000. American Idol first aired in 2002. Wrestling still experienced pretty damn good ratings during all these shows most popular times during their original runs.
With the proliferation of DVR, people can watch their wrestling whenever you have time, regardless of reality TV programming.
If the wrestling program was compelling, people would find a way to watch it.
The current WWE is a shit product, and the ratings reflect that. Especially segment by segment. When Daniel Bryan segment comes on the ratings dip because people change the channel. How that isn't a stinging indictment is beyond me.
It comes down to this. Many of you folks are totally deluded into thinking that the current product is fine when it
clearly isn't.